Birch Cottage has a new website of its own
Visit the Birch Cottage website to bookWelcome to Lackan Cottage Farm
We’re Steve and Claire Golemboski-Byrne, we live here off grid with our daughter, our dog, cats and horses. We make all our own energy using wind and solar, grow as much of our own food as we can (it varies widely) and have used permaculture design principles to help us create a great place to live.
Here on the website you’ll find stories about the projects we’ve undertaken – what works, what doesn’t. You can come stay in our guest cottage – Birch Cottage and we will show you round, or maybe you just want to find out how to do some of this stuff. Either way, welcome.
Well done you
It was great to meet the bus full of people who arrived today with Tom Woolley, who has been running an introduction to eco building course. Some great stories, wonderful plans, and glimpses of old buildings that will hopefully be reawakened by the amazing enthusiasm...
Turning up the heat
This is a rocket mass heater - the way in which we will be heating our crowdfunded ecobuild. It is an incredibly efficient way to burn woodfuel, and extracts the maximum amount of heat energy from the fire. The flue gases heat a big cob bench, which then continues to...
Weaving a fence
Isabelle and Josiane have come from Quebec, Canada to volunteer on the farm for 3 weeks, and having spend days clearing and mulching young trees, they are turning their attentions to creating a fence from the piles of birch trimmings that have been sitting in...
Great reasons to plant trees
An incredible 35 tonnes of carbon will be locked up over the lifetime of the trees we will plant for those who have so far pledged to our crowdfunding campaign - as well as being beautiful:) We're planting a tree for everyone who gets involved, as well as lots of...
All fired up
We're all fired up - not only because the benign weather has allowed us to share food around the fire for a few days, but because after just three days of campaigning we have reached over 30% of our funding goal! We're full of exciting plans for the build that looks...
Making raised (lazy) beds
Today we created a simple raised 'lazy' bed, although why they are called that I've no idea - making them is strenuous enough. The first step is to mark out and then turn over all the sod on your bed area. At this stage the bed is pretty flat looking. Then, we cut the...